The three boys stared with their mouths agape as Yamato fled through a series of hand signs and laid his palm flat on the earth before stepping back and motioning to the boys to do the same The ground beneath their feet began to shake. Choji audibly gulped.

Where they had been standing, the ground split into two, revealing a series of stone stairs that descended so deep into the darkness of the earth that they seemed infinite.

"Come on, I'll explain as we walk," Yamato said as he led the way down the stairs.

The boys looked at each other for a moment. The man was wearing a leaf headband, and he seemed undaunting enough. They shrugged to each other before following. At least there was an adult around, and it seemed like he had some answers. After what they had been through, that felt like heaven enough.

Naruto was last in line, and as soon as he stepped down far enough that his head was underground, the opening in the ground above them rumbled shut. The stairs were illuminated by glowing green crystals that were embedded in the ground.

Naruto reached out to touch one. His fingers gently grazed across the greenstone and the glow pulsed under his touch. They were beautiful. They reminded him of the eyes of a girl he had a crush on in the academy. Naruto drew his hand back running his fingertips over where the crystal had made them cool to touch.

"The crystals grow naturally beneath the mountains," Shikamaru said. He was walking right in front of Naruto and he had glanced over behind his shoulder.

"They do," Yamato said at the front of the line, "but these ones have been altered. They react to my chakra. When I open the passageway, my chakra pulses through all of them and activates them. It makes it easier for people to find their way I think."

Yamato paused.

They had made it to the ground and were now standing in a narrow tunnel. It seemed every few feet there was a fork in their path, but the crystals pulsed and glowed in one direction, leading the way. Behind them, the crystals went dark as soon as Naruto made it a few feet past them.

He twisted his head back and threw a smile at the boys. They looked back at him apprehensively. He sighed. He really hated being the welcoming committee.

"I guess this is where I start explaining," Yamato said as they continued walking. "Luckily, the walk to the base is just long enough to answer all of your questions."

"The town…start with the town," Shikamaru said, and then remembering his manners he added a subdued "Please."

Yamato chuckled to himself. He had read the boys' files before coming to get them. He knew that the Nara boy would be bursting with questions. According to his file, there was very little the boy didn't understand, and what he didn't understand, he figured out.

"The town is a safety measure," Yamato explained. "We built it and put it directly over the entrance to the base camp. To everyone else, it looks like a normal civilian town. There is nothing to arouse suspicion."

"That is why the town isn't on any map!" Naruto exclaimed. But Shikamaru had already pieced that together and he had more pressing questions.

"That is not true! The town is highly suspicious," Shikamaru countered. "The people there were…weird. They were so quiet. The silence alone is enough to tip anyone off. It set my teeth on edge. I am sure it would do the same for many experienced shinobi. Why are they so quiet anyway?"

The normally calm and lazy boy spoke quickly. These thoughts had been swirling through his mind for the past few hours, and he wanted solid answers.

Yamato smiled to himself again. The files were right. He was smart. "They are a weird bunch, aren't they? I suppose puppets don't have much to say."

Shikamaru's eyes widened. Puppets! That's why the movements were jerky! That's why they were so quiet! That's why it was as though they were looking straight through them!

"The town was one of Konoha's better ideas. In fact, Shikamaru, your father helped plan it. We picked up the puppet technique from our many battles with Suna. They excel in puppetry. They make theirs with sand and clay, but we found our chakra melds much better with the mud."

"That's why they looked like they were melting when my clones were attacking them!" Naruto exclaimed from the back.

Yamato nodded.

"But that still doesn't explain everything else!" Naruto yelled impatiently from the back. His voice echoed through the tunnel, reverberating off the walls. Yamato winced. Everything the files had said about the blonde seemed to be true as well. Loud, impatient, and lacking in critical thinking.

"…. You were waiting for us." Shikamaru said to Yamato, ignoring Naruto entirely. "The town…if its made up entirely of puppets, there have to be puppet users around it controlling them. We were being watched the whole time. The people that came and attacked us were Konoha shinobi that watch over the town in case of intruders."

Yamato nodded again and Shikamaru continued.

"The shinobi… they attacked us, but they didn't cause any damage… That would explain the clues. If we were hostiles, the puppets might have attacked sooner, and the shinobi controlling them would have overpowered us in seconds. But you knew we were coming to the training camp. You wanted to test us. The whole thing was a ruse. The puppets were silent because you wanted to set us on edge. You wanted to see what we would do. We weren't supposed to stupidly go and approach the puppets, were we? Our cautiousness is what got us through. And you wanted to see if we would piece together the clues and find Choji to make our way out."

Shikamaru talked through his thought aloud and Yamato listened in silent admiration. The boy really was something. If you gave him a thread, he would pull it until he unraveled the whole mystery.

"The brains really do run through your clan Shikamaru," Yamato said to Shikamaru, "I have had the honor to meet and work with your father. The similarities between you two are striking."

Yamato continued leading the boys down the maze of tunnels. For the benefit of the other two boys, he thought he would explain the situation further. It was clear that Shikamaru had understood everything, but he wasn't so sure about Choji and he was definitely unsure about Naruto.

Yamato cleared his throat before addressing the other two boys.

"The recruiters for the training camp had cast a wide net. I think you met yours in an alley on your walk home from the academy one day, right Naruto?" Naruto nodded. He didn't realize that Yamato knew so much about his situation. It made him wonder… what else did he know?

"The recruiter had asked for people of all backgrounds, but the fact is that the training camp is for an elite few. There can't be too many of you here of word will get out. We set up the town as a test. A harmless way to make sure that we were only getting the academy students that were worthwhile…or the academy students that had the foresight to pair up with students that were worthwhile." Yamato glanced back at Naruto, and unsurprisingly, the blonde boy had a grimace. The implication of the older man's words had not been lost on him. Shikamaru and Choji both had clan jutsu's…but him? He got lucky to run into them in the woods.

Good. Yamato's words had been intended to set Naruto on edge. The boy responded best to challenges. The truth was that between Choji's excellence of his clan's jutsu, and Naruto's ability to master the kage-bunshin jutsu that was set out for him in minutes, both boys had exceeded expectations…but they didn't need to know that just yet. Criticism leads to the best progress, Yamato believed.

"Ahh, here we are," Yamato said, approaching what seemed like a dead end. He pushed his palm against the wall and after a moment of bated breath, the wall broke into two.


AN: Hello again! I fell off the bandwagon for a while but I am back and renewed! I hope you like this chapter. I hope this clears things up a little more for those of you that had questions. Please like, review, and follow if you like what you see